Sudan has called on the United Nations to end the UN stabilization mission in the civil war country. The government has decided that the Unitams mission, with more than 400 mostly civilian employees, must be discontinued with immediate effect, according to a letter from the country’s UN mission, citing the Foreign Ministry in Khartoum.
The letter addressed to UN Secretary General António Guterres is available to the German Press Agency. It has already been shared with member states of the Security Council.
An armed conflict broke out in Sudan in mid-April. The army, led by commander and de facto President of Sudan, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is fighting against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Vice President Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, who was dismissed in the course of the conflict. The two generals took power together in a coup in 2021, but later fell out. Neither side has been able to gain the upper hand so far. The UN mission in the country has existed since 2020. Blue helmets are not deployed there.
UN reaction
The relationship between the government and the United Nations has been tense for months. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry declared German special envoy Volker Perthes persona non grata in June. Perthes finally resigned in September and moved to head the UN mission in Iraq. Al-Burhan accused Perthes of fomenting conflict in Sudan.
A UN spokesman commented on Khartoum’s request that a strategic review of the mission in Sudan should be initiated anyway in order to adapt it to the war conditions in the country in northeast Africa.
“The letter will be taken into account as part of this work,” it said. If a host country prohibits a UN mission from continuing its work, the United Nations usually cannot do much about it and has to comply, as was recently the case in the civil war-torn country of Mali. The withdrawal of a significantly larger peace mission there is in full swing.
